


The Truth Between Us

by misbegotten



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 15:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13079868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misbegotten/pseuds/misbegotten
Summary: They don't get nearly enough time together like this.





	The Truth Between Us

"You still owe me a trip down the pub," Ellie says. She's panting slightly.

So is Hardy. He rolls off of her, throwing a bare arm over his eyes. "Can we not to do this right now?" But it's said without heat, probably because he's got the aftershocks of a really good orgasm playing at the edges of his senses. 

She smacks him lightly in rebuke, then takes his arm and drapes it around her shoulders. She curls into him, head on his chest, fingers tracing a pattern on the lean muscle there. "I'm just saying, all of our dates can't be on a bench."

Hardy presses a kiss to her hair and twines his legs with hers. "It's worked fine so far."

She snorts. "A quick one while Daisy is at Chloe's is hardly romantic."

Alec Hardy may not have a romantic bone in his body, but he knows better than to argue with Ellie after she's just had her hand on him. Except: "You weren't complaining earlier."

Ellie pinches his nipple. 

"Oi," he protests. He tightens his hold on her, pinning her arms to his chest. Trying to stay out of pinching range, maybe. But he's done this before, Ellie thinks. Held her so close that he nearly presses the breath out of her. Flecks of sweat dot their skin, melding together beneath the touch of flesh on flesh. 

"Alright," she says softly, yielding, and his hold loosens. The room smells like sweat and sex, and she has a mind to air it out before Daisy returns. Not that she can be convinced to drag herself away from Hardy right now, from the tangle of his limbs and the warmth of his form bent to hers. 

They don't get nearly enough time together like this. Her house is impossible, his merely difficult. And work... well, at work they are a well-oiled machine, clanking away to grind the machinery of justice. But it's nothing like this, nothing like the feel of his solid heartbeat beneath her fingertips, the taste of him on her tongue when he leans in for a languid kiss. They don't often get to share a bed, and it's not as if they can nip over to the Traders for a spell. Not without gossip. And Broadchurch thrives on gossip.

She pushes aside the thought of others and focuses instead on the here and now. On the man -- maddening creature that he might be at work -- who has currently worked his way down to dust her neck with featherlight kisses. He daren't leave a mark, but his tongue lingers in places, a little like wanting. She hitches her hip, slotting herself against him so she can feel him twitch when she runs her fingers down his back. She has marked _him_ , the scratchy edge of her nails leaving staccato lines on the pale skin there, and she likes the thought of him feeling her later, carrying her temporary brand beneath the armor of his suit and tie. It coils into something tight in her belly, and to work out the feeling she flexes her toes, stretches her fingers.

He lifts his head from her neck and looks up, brown eyes meeting hers with curious intensity. There are always things flashing behind those fathomless depths. Memories maybe, or wants unexpressed. Ellie thinks she ought to try to read him like she would a suspect, but it would be a betrayal of the trust they've built in each other. And Ellie doesn’t work that way, perhaps to her detriment. If she were a different person, she would not have been betrayed so badly by Joe. 

The knowledge that this man, though, would never harm her in that way hums beneath her skin. Hardy is all suppressed emotion, where Joe had been a seemingly readable canvas. She's traded in her old life for something different, here. Stolen moments of joy have replaced casual, false intimacies. This tetchy, artless man has given her comfort she didn't think possible.

"What?" he asks, reading something in her expression.

"S'nothing," she says, flushing. And then, because there is truth between them, "I was just thinking."

"'Bout what?" he asks again. 

She stills for a moment. Then, with a quick intake of breath, "I was thinking that I love you."

Hardy -- _Alec_ , whether he likes it or not -- brings her open palm to his mouth and kisses it. "Well, then." His breath is warm in her hand. "I suppose I might be persuaded to take you to the pub."

The tension dissolves with her bubble of laughter. "Knob," she says, tugging gently on his beard. 

"Ellie," he says, eyes gentling. "You know I--"

She shakes her head minutely, and he stops. "It's okay," she says in a rush, caught up in something bigger than the gentle afterglow of sex or even the way her insides seem upside down right now. "You don't have to say it."

He pauses, then chases the words from her lips with a kiss. His tongue drags across hers, and he presses himself against her more firmly. When he finally draws back, there is that curiously intent look again. "Maybe," he suggests, "I want to say it."

"Oh," she breathes.

His hands span across her chest then fold to settle above her heart. "Ellie," he says, and kisses her. "Miller," he says, and there's something weighty there. "I love you," he says.

She smiles, feels like she can't stop smiling. "Right then."


End file.
